HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF.
fTo THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR•1 SIB,—When Southey penned the following remarks concern- ing the conduct of the Opposition during the Peninsular War•, be little foresaw how exactly they would apply to the conduct of a section of the Opposition in the years 1900-1 :—
" The Opposition consisted of the most heterogeneous and dis-
cordant materials The Foxites, from the beginning of the war, through all its changes had uniformly taken part against their country : consistent in this and nothing else, they bad always sided with the enemy, pleading his cause, palliating his crimes, extolling his wisdom, magnifying his power, vilifying and accusing their own Government, depreciating its resources, im- peding its measures, insulting its allies, calling for disclosures which no Government ought to make, and forcing them some- times from the weakness and the mistaken liberality of their opponents. Buonaparte, as Washington had done before him, relied upon their zeal and virulence : and they by their speeches and writings served him more effectually upon the Continent and in France itself, than all the manifestoes of his Ministers, and th.• diatribes of his own Press. In future ages it will be thought a strange and almost incredible anomaly in politics, that there should have existed in the Legislature of any country a regular patty, organised and acknowledged as such, whose business it was to obstruct the proceedings of Government, and render it by every possible means contemptible and odious to the people : a party always in semi alliance with the enemy, who in times of difficulty and danger prophesied nothing but failure, disgrace, and ruin : and whose systematic course of conduct, if it had been intended to bring about the fulfilment of their predictions, could not have been more exactly adapted to that object."—" History of the Peninsular War," by Robert Southey, Vol. I., pp. 55-56.
Truly, our worst foes are those of our own household !—I am,
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